Games Are “Serious Business”
8/24/08!
Games are “serious business”
• Facts from www.esa.org: – $7.4 billion revenues in 2006 – Average player is 33 years old and has been playing for 12 years – 36% percent of American parents play computer – 80% percent of gamer parents play with their kids • From Blizzard press release: World of Warcraft surpasses Lecture 1: Introduction 10 million subscribers in January 2008 – $13 to $15 monthly (for 2.5 million in U.S. at least) Prof. Aaron Lanterman – Do the math!!!! School of Electrical and Computer Engineering • Stephen Johnson, “Everything Bad Georgia Institute of Technology is Good for You: How Today's Popular! Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter” Screenshot from www.worldofwarcraft.com/burningcrusade/imageviewer.html?,images/screenshots/,65,241,
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Our MPG class fills an industry need The realities of real-time
• “CPU/GPU programming skill is the biggest hole they have. They • The architectures we will look at are driven by real-time can't find students who can do it well.” - Prof. Blair MacIntyre constraints • “The biggest challenge facing game companies right now is the – 60 frames per second problem of writing multithreaded code that fully supports the – 1/60 ≈ 16.7 milliseconds multiple-core architectures of the latest PCs and the next – Average performance is irrelevant; it’s the max that matters ! generation game consoles.” - Jeremy Reimer, “Valve goes multicore” • In contrast, most scientific applications can be handled • “If a programming genius like John Carmack can be so “offline” befuddled by mysterious issues coming from multithreaded – Computers historically designed to work well in “batch mode” programming, what chance do mere mortals have?” - Jeremy Reimer, “Cross-platform game development and the next generation of consoles” • We may briefly discuss exploiting this kind of hardware for scientific applications http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/valve-multicore.ars – GPGPU movement http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/hardware/crossplatform.ars – Sony’s folding@home
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This is NOT a course on game design, or… This is only partially a graphics course
• See CS4455: Video Game Design • No background in computer graphics required! – Founded by Amy Bruckman in 1998 – Make sure class is accessible to ECE majors • See CS4731: Game AI for the real deal on AI • We will review a minimal amount of necessary background – But we may dabble in AI just a little bit – Geometric transformations, backface culling, clipping, rasterization, lighting, texture mapping, etc. • Also won’t be talking about… • Emphasis will be on real-time graphics – Handheld game devices • That may change in the future! • We won’t be talking about things like… – “Alternative” controllers – Perception – Networking issues (LAN parties, MMORPGs, etc.) – Global illumination: ray tracing, radiosity, photon mapping – Prototyping, user testing • Although people are experimenting with putting such algorithms on GPUs! – Societal impact of games – Advanced animation techniques: inverse kinematics – Gender and games • See CS3451/CS6491: Computer Graphics, CS4496/CS7496: – Business issues (organizational issues of large teams, etc.) Computer Animation, CS4475: Computational Photography, • May incidentally touch upon some of the above issues CS4480 Digital Video Special FX
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This is WILL be a course on… Then vs. Now
• Emphasis will be on games that simulate and depict “realistic” animated 3-D environments • In the early days of computer games, the – Algorithms “designer” and the “programmer” were often one – Architectures and the same – Programming paradigms • Practical target platforms • Nowadays there are usually separate positions of – Xbox 360 – Playstation 3 “producer,” “lead designer,” “lead artist,” “lead – Windows PCs with NVIDIA or ATI graphics cards programmer,” etc. – …and maybe taste of Playstation 2 • Future target platforms – Intel’s Larabee • What about the Wii?
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Two recurring themes Taking a broad view of “video games” • Commercial game industry is brutal • Theme 1: Hardware features influence game – Nov. 2004: “EA Spouse” post (ea-spouse.livejournal.com) design – Some companies get hundreds of resumes per week per listing – If the Atari 400 gives you 4 sprites, you’ll naturally find (www.gamasutra.com/features/20050711/mcshaffry_01.shtml) something to do with those 4 sprites • Think “outside the box” a bit – If a Playstation 3 can push a gazillion polygons, – Computer engineering developers feel obligated to provide a gazillion polygons • Nothing is driving technological develop as fast as gaming • Gaming experience gives future computer engineers insight • Driving budgets through the roof • Maybe you’ll work for NVIDIA or ATI? • 100 person teams - 30 programmers, 70 artists • Maybe you’ll work for Intel, AMD, or IBM? • Trend not sustainable! • Maybe you’ll help design the Playstation 4 or Xbox 720? • With all the emphasis on 3-D realism, could great games like – “Game” programming/design: think beyond the commercial industry Ms. Pac-Man or Balance of Power be made today? – Scientific potential of GPGPU – Even if you never program any “games,” multicore is the future! • Theme 2: Sufficient cleverness can sometimes • That all said - we’d be totally thrilled if you got a job at overcome hardware limitations Insomniac, Bungie, Blizzard, Activision, LucasArts, etc.
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Many opportunities for independent developers Consoles hostile territory for indie developers (1)
• On-line distribution • To sell games on a console, you still must pass – Takes manufacturing costs out of the equation the gatekeepers at Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo – “Brick & mortar” stores have limited shelf space - on-line services like Amazon, Netflix, etc. can exploit “the long tail” • Code must be “digitally signed” to run – Why are we still shipping boxes mostly full of air? – Piracy concerns – Consoles supposed to provide safe environment • Greg Costikyan’s Manifesto! Games • Unlike PC users who are used to dealing with viruses, spyware, crashing programs • Jeff Vogel of Spiderweb Software has been crafting “old- • Manufacturers worried about “untrustworthy” code screwing up school” 2-D and isometric RPGs as his full-time job for people’s consoles over a decade • Want to ensure a uniform, “quality” experience – Exile, Nethergate, Avernum, Geneforge • They have more lawyers than you – www.spiderwebsoftware.org – Makes house payments, feeds kids
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Consoles hostile territory for indie developers (2) “Serious Games”
• Games for “training” and “education” • Nintendo NES “pioneered” business model – First responders: “Hazmat: Hotzone” – Medicine: “Pulse!!” – Typical ell consoles at a loss – Business: “Stone City” for Cold Creamery – Charge royalty on units manufactured, not units sold
• For indie developers, online distribution (Xbox Live Arcade, Playstation Network, WiiWare, etc.) seems like the least risky option
• Ian Bogost (LCC) doesn’t like the term “serious games” Screenshot from www.gamasutra.com/features/20051102/carless_01b.shtml www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/apr2006/id20060410_051875.htm www.persuasivegames.com
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“Persuasive Games” & “Games for Change” Other real-time applications
• Expand the “Serious Games” notion to include broader • Graphics categories like “advertising,” (advergame), “propaganda,” – MRI in the operating room “subversion” • Processing • The Howard Dean for Iowa game – Machine vision • Disaffected! (not authorized by Kinkos) • Toshiba demos: real-time face tracking, markerless motion • America’s Army - training, advertising capture, hand gesture user interface or propaganda? – U.S. government spent $7 million, but free to play – made with Unreal Tournament engine – Data compression/decompression • New Toshiba HDTVs will use Cell processors – Radar signal processing • 7 SPE Cells -> PS3s; 8 SPE Cells->Mercury Computing blades
Pics from Wikipedia & www.persuasivegames.com Images from sti.cc.gatech.edu/Slides/Masubuchi-070618.pdf Info from Ian Bogost, “Persuasive Games” 15! and http://www.radiology.uiowa.edu/NEWS/Haller-PDF.pdf 16!
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Movie magic • Hollywood – Final ray-traced renderings usually done off-line using “render farms” – Continually improving real-time graphics lets moviemakers more easily experiment via “pre-viz” • Both on CGI-intensive sequences and live-action sequences • “Machinima” – Fans making films using game engines
thesims2.ea.com/sims2_userdata/16/303316/movie_myimmortal.wmv
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